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On Sunday, the Senate will vote on reauthorizing Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the controversial section that allows the bulk collection of telephone metadata. Actually, it doesn’t allow it, according to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, but everyone is still acting like it does and framing the debate accordingly.

UPDATE: Senator Paul is standing firm on his promise to hold out for better surveillance reforms. Since Senator McConnell has thus far shown no indication that he will allow the amendment votes that Rand has asked for, there is a good chance that Section 215 of the Patriot Act will be allowed to expire Sunday night.

Today, the House will likely pass their bill, the USA FREEDOM Act, to reform and reauthorize the controversial Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. This portion of the 2001 law was revealed by Edward Snowden to be the legal justification for the massive, nearly limitless collection of American citizens’ telephone metadata by the NSA. Unfortunately, this year's USA Freedom Act as currently conceived is weaker than previous versions.

As one of our more than 6.9 million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to support the End Warrantless Surveillance of Americans Act, H.R. 2233. Introduced by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Thomas Massie (R-KY), this bill would take huge strides towards curtailing the government’s ability to access to Americans’ electronic communications without a warrant.

In an era of judicial activism and a lot of nonsense talk about “a living document,” it’s refreshing to see that there are still some Courts interested in upholding the Constitution and defending the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights.

Today, the House Judiciary Committee voted on the bipartisan Poe-Lofgren Amendment to the USA Freedom Act, a bill intended to reduce to reduce warrantless spying on American citizens. The Amendment offered two desperately needed improvements to the bill. The first would have prevented the government from searching through “incidentally collected data” without a specific warrant except in emergency situations. The second would forbid the government from requesting or mandating that manufacturers include “back doors” in their products to allow for surveillance of the users.

As one of our more than 6.9 million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact the members of the House Judiciary Committee today and ask them to support the Poe-Lofgren Amendment to the USA FREEDOM Act to limit NSA spying.

Set to expire at the end of May, Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act is only one of a number of authorities the government uses to defy the 4th Amendment and spy on millions of Americans without a direct warrant. Nevertheless, its upcoming sunset date provides defenders of liberty a strong chance to make serious move back towards our founders’ intention that: